Jim Nelson: Blame the Fame

It's hard to have sympathy for celebrities like Alec Baldwin and Shia Labeouf when they want out of the whole famous person thing. Lack of privacy is part of the deal, right? But, if you've ever been one of the guys chasing down a boldfaced name, you might relate.

When did famous people become so ungrateful for all we do for them? God, we do so much for them! We create them, nourish them, and coddle them like proud parents. We even show up at all their events! And we watch them get bigger and bigger. But then they get a little too big and they start to want their privacy, and we don’t like that. We try to pull them closer, but that just makes them run away from us faster. THE INGRATES!

Lately this tragic cycle of love and rejection is playing out in ways that infantilize us all. Famous people are spitting their fame out in our face, saying they don’t like the taste. I feel like my dad when he caught me spitting my beets out at the dinner table. EAT IT, goddamn it. You will eat it, and you will LIKE IT!!!

Just witness the parade of recent fame rejecters: Alec Baldwin announced he is saying good-bye (and eff you) to public life. Shia LaBeouf has taken to wearing a weirdo bag over his head with the words I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE. (Many of us wish he’d worn that same bag in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.) Kanye West said he feels like a zoo animal, caged and taunted by insatiable paparazzi. Apparently Justin Bieber broke down in tears to his manager a while back because he couldn’t deal with the lack of privacy that comes with stardom and owning capuchin monkeys.

I don’t get it. Lack of privacy? That’s a gift we give you. You don’t have to worry about privacy anymore! We took it permanently off your plate. You’re welcome!

Look, celebrities are the last creatures for whom we feel any kind of sympathy, but maybe that’s our own pathology. They have egos; we have obsessions, which include watching their egos explode. Take Baldwin. Last fall, a couple years after he was thrown off an airplane for not turning off his cell phone, he was videotaped calling a photographer a cocksucking fag. You kiss your mother with that mouth?! You play Words with Friends with that mouth? He made it worse by the clueless tweet he sent out and later deleted: Acoustic analysis proves the word is fathead. That really hurt the feelings of fat-headed people everywhere! Here’s how he explained himself to New York magazine: Am I a homophobe? Look, I work in show business. I am awash in gay people. (Awash? Weird word. It conjured Baldwin floating in a gay sauna, assiduously being sponged.)

Still, I don’t blame these guys for railing against the perverse side of fame, and I don’t think they bargained for being zoo animals even if they sometimes buy monkeys and don’t know what to do with them. You can say whatever you want about Kanye West (he ain’t humble), but I saw a clip of him trying to escape the paparazzi and hitting his head (hard!) on a traffic sign, and I felt nothing but unyielding sympathy for him.

And here’s my confession, part of why I feel we’re as guilty as the big egos: I was on the perverse side of it once. Years and years ago, way before Wolf Blitzer was created in a cryogenics lab, I worked for CNN. I was a young field producer, assigned to do stakeouts during the Iran-Contra scandal. That meant I had to get up before the crack of dawn, drive to Virginia, and, with an army of camera crews, stand outside the house of the main culprit in the scandal, Lt. Col. Oliver North. (Have you heard of North? I think Kanye West named his child after him.)

Advertisement

I will admit: Standing out there with my TV-news brethren was thrilling at first; there was something media-scrummy about it all, the gang of us up early, blowing on our steaming hot coffees and knowing we were doing right by democracy. But soon the waiting became Godot-like. I didn’t respect what Oliver North had done—blatantly subverting the law—but I sure wished he would come out and talk to my microphone like a nice arms dealer. But it was never gonna happen. Ollie didn’t want to be seen. (Hence the camouflage.) If we got to his farmhouse at 4 A.M., he’d have snuck out by 3:30. I believe he had a secret trapdoor underneath his bathtub—just like El Chapo, the elusive drug-cartel capitán.

And then one day it happened.

He came out of his house! Like a little prairie dog peeping out of his hole. Oh my God, he’s getting in his car! He’s coming our way! It felt like some kind of patriotic mirage. The security gate swung open, he pulled up and poked his head out. His bright Marine smile was an assault on the morning. What are you good people doing out here so early? We ran to his car frantically, ecstatically, like dying moths to a windshield. And then, with camera lights popping, we attacked the enemy with mad, incoherent questions: Colonel North Mr. North sir Oliver Iran-Contra missiles what did Reagan know are you ashamed hey what kind of car do you drive how do you justify hijacking American foreign policy?

I’m telling you, we were on that man, on his car, in his face, up his nostrils. Years later, when I watched Cameron Diaz hump that convertible in The Counselor, I thought: I’ve been there.

He gave us a charmed chuckle and a quick, meaningless sound bite, then drove away. (Later he would run for the Senate!) A few of the other reporters acted cocky, called their news desks immediately, and pretended as if we had just landed Deep Throat. I knew better. If I’d had one, I’d have put a bag over my head:

Since 1957, GQ has inspired men to look sharper and live smarter with its unparalleled coverage of style, culture, and beyond. From award-winning writing and photography to binge-ready videos to electric live events, GQ meets millions of modern men where they live, creating the moments that create conversations.